She leaned back against the cushions while Belding dipped a practiced
blade in the unruffled stream. The night was clear and the sky studded
with innumerable stars.
"Where to?" he said contentedly.
She waved a slim hand towards the rapids. "As near as you can, then
round into the big bay."
He put his back into his work and the canoe shot forward, reaching
presently those long foam-flecked swells that mark the foot of the
turmoil. In ten minutes they were in the heel of the rapids and as far
as Belding dared go with so precious a burden. Elsie felt the cold
spray on her face and her eyes shone with delight. After a little she
pointed northward and the canoe edged into the big bay that stretched
below, the works.
The bulk of the pulp mill loomed darkly into the quiet air, and further
up they could hear the rattle of machine drills hammering into the
great sandstone ledges. Passing the pigmy lock of the old Hudson Bay
Company, they floated a hundred yards from shore and immediately
opposite the blockhouse. Here Elsie lifted her hand, and Belding, with
a queer feeling of resentment, backed water.
The upper part of the house was softly lighted and the windows were
open. Its gabled roof seemed diminutive compared to the structures
which were taking shape close by and, as they looked, there drifted out
the sound of a piano. Clark himself was invisible, but his finger tips
were talking to the glistening keys. Elsie listened breathlessly.
This was the man within the man who now sat plunged in profound
meditation.
Presently the music ceased and Clark's figure appeared at the window.
He was staring at the rapids, and it seemed that as he stared he set up
some mysterious communication that linked his own force and
determination with their irresistible sweep.
On the way back Elsie was very silent and it came upon Belding with
dull insistency that whatever attraction he had hoped to have for the
girl had been merged in the fact that, for the present at any rate, he
was nothing more than a means of satisfying her sudden and, to him,
fantastical interest in the man under whose dominant bidding the color
of so many lives was being modified and blended.